The present invention relates to pickup tines on harvester pickup reels, and more particularly, to an improved pickup tine designed to avoid breakage and deformation. The present invention also provides an increase in section modules and reduces the cost of the replacement tine since only one part should generally ever require replacement.
Harvesters consist of a rotating cylinder and reel bars with teeth attached thereto. The rotating cylinder is attached at the front of the harvester and runs parallel to the field from which crops are to be harvested. Generally a series of reel bars are placed circumferentially around the rotating cylinder and positioned parallel therewith. As the harvester moves forward the cylinder rotates in that same direction. Likewise, the reel bars begin to rotate around the cylinder. As the reel bars rotate they carry the teeth around the cylinder and eventually force the teeth to make contact with the crops to be harvested and the ground from which the crop is taken. A unique embodiment of these "teeth", which are better known as tines or reel pickup tines are the focus of the present invention.
Pickup tines are commonly made of plastic having many different shapes. They are used on harvester pickup reels. Earlier plastic tines have generally been less than satisfactory in the field due to breakage or permanent bends which shut down the harvesting operation until the tine can be replaced. Shutting down the harvesting operation due to a broken tine can be very costly in terms of time lost due to the potentially hundreds of tines, all susceptible to damage, which exist on a single harvester. To offset any lost time it is often the case that harvesting is not shut down until numerous tines have become deformed or damaged beyond repair. However, this failure to replace missing, damaged, and broken tines only leads to lost crops in lieu of lost time. The problem of breakage and deformation of plastic tines has been addressed before (See U.S. Pat. No. 4,882,899). While the present invention also addresses this problem it goes on to recognize that breakage and deformation will inevitably occur with plastic tines. Therefore, a novel readily replaceable tine is also disclosed so that when tines are eventually replaced they are done so with a minimal amount of lost time.